we keep this love in a photograph
by likeglitterandgold
Summary: Tony Stark's greatest achievement, told through inventions, memories, and photographs. This is an edited version of something I posted before, and has more changes. No Endgame spoilers here, but later chapters will.
1. we keep this love in a photograph

**Title: ****we keep this love in a photograph**

**Summary: Tony Stark's achievements, truths, memories, loves, and lights. So, I published this story a few weeks ago, and just recently updated it because I wanted to do a second chapter, but some elements didn't quite fit. Most things are canon now, which makes the second chapter I'm in the process of writing quite easier. This isn't exactly unfinished, it's more a bunch of oneshots centered around the same topic. I'm sorry if Endgame caused anyone pain. There will be no Endgame spoilers in this chapter, nor the next one, but if I choose to write more, those next ones will. I hope you enjoy! Also, if you want to talk about Endgame PM me.**

_I am made of glass but I will not shatter_

_I am made of wood but I will not rot_

_I am made of metal but I will not rust_

_I will show_

_I will ignite_

_I will shine_

If one were to walk into Tony Stark's lab on floor 125 of Stark Tower, one would first notice the suits. There are fifty of them, red and gold, gleaming against the harsh white light of the lab, and they represent nearly a decade of work and pain and mistrust, but also freedom and love and safety. The suits saved more lives than they lost, and yet it is not the suits that do this.

Lined up chronologically, it is only logical for one to assume that these fifty pieces of art, these fifty pieces of Iron Man, something light-years ahead of what is possible, would be Mr. Stark's pride and joy.

One is wrong―the suits represent a need for protection, therefore admitting that Earth is not safe, and act as a reminder that as long as Iron Man soars through the sky, there will always be lives that could not be saved.

Venture further into the lab, and one will notice the bots, silent for they are sleeping. They are U, Butterfingers, and Dum-E. The last, made by Stark at MIT, is probably the most important bot of the three. He, for yes, he is a he, revolutionized AI and technology as we knew it yet is referred to by a name that any self-respecting human would take offense to.

Why would one call genius piece of engineering such as that of Dum-E a dummy? Because Dum-E is not, in fact, a dummy. This fact, along with many others, contributes to the need for Pepper's display, which Tony destroyed in the same day and moment that Dum-E saved his life, a protocol which Mr. Stark had not, in fact, written in.

Suffice to say, the bots are examples of sentient AI, so smart and self-learning that of course they must obviously be Mr. Stark's greatest achievement.

They are not.

Go even further so, and one will be greeted by a female voice, a voice which sounds so human that one will look over their shoulder for the source of the voice. They will not find one. The voice will ask one the nature of one's visit, for they are clearly trespassing.

Instead of answering, one will marvel at the fact that Mr. Stark had managed to create a true, Skynet-be-damned AI. One will assume that it (_she_) took him years to make, but one will be wrong because all it took were sleepless nights, endless coffee, and a memory, for FRIDAY was not the first.

Although Stark has created tech that the likes of Elon Musk and Bill Gates would turn green with envy at, JARVIS and FRIDAY and HOMER and JOCASTA and HELEN and PLATO and VIRGIL and Vision are not his greatest achievements, they are his creations.

For all of Stark's tech and all of his genius, his greatest achievement is not an invention.

If one was to scrutinise the lab, looking deeper than the suits and bots and holograms and FRIDAY, one would notice, out of the corner of one's eye, something so out of place one would wonder that one didn't notice it before.

In the corner of the lab, hidden by the clutter of inventions scattered here and there, is a small section of wall. There is nothing special about this wall, it does not glow or fly or detach to reveal a machine gun. It is a wall, but that is not what makes it special. What makes it special is the photographs on the wall, some framed and some not, some black and white and some colored, some grainy and some high-definition.

These photos, spanning several decades, tell a story that many have overlooked―Tony Stark's. Yes, most of what the world knows is true―he is the son of the late Howard and Maria Stark, who were tragically killed by the Winter Soldier when Tony was twenty-one. He is the heir to the Stark Empire, he went to MIT at fifteen, became a genius billionaire playboy philanthropist, was kidnapped and became Iron Man when he was thirty-eight, and became an Avenger at age forty-two.

He's seen more than most people have, has been to space, fought aliens, befriended a god, and was betrayed time and time again by those he trusted. But this is not what the photos are about.

There is a photo, off to the upper right, of himself as a baby. His mother, Maria, looks exhausted but still perfect, holding baby Tony with a small smile on her face. Howard stands next to her, arms behind his back, a press-ready smile fixated upon his face. Jarvis stands to Maria's right, out of the ordinary but not surprising. He is dressed impeccably, looking every bit the butler he is. However, the most surprising thing in the photo, but at the same time the least so, is Peggy Carter.

She stands next to Howard, a few (_three_) inches shorter. Dressed in the fashion of the sixties, her grey-streaked brown hair styled in her signature forties fashion, Peggy's red lipstick is as timeless as the photo. She is always the element of the photo that surprises most, although she should not be. She and Howard were friends, after all, and there should have been no reason for them to end such a relationship after Steve was frozen. Peggy is also, perhaps, the person who deserves to be there most.

The next photo is of solely Peggy and Tony. Tony is dressed in an MIT cap and gown, and scrawled across the bottom of the photo are the words _June 1, 1987―Tony's MIT graduation!_ It is written in Peggy's hand, a swirling, looping calligraphy, and is followed by a filled-in heart.

One will notice, as they look at the photo, that it is not Mr. Stark's press smile.

It is not the smile he gives during an interview. It is not the smile he gives for photos. It is a full on, gleeful, joyous smile that can only be described as boyish and carefree. It is the smile of a seventeen year old boy who is surrounded by the two people he loves most―Jarvis, the real one, the one taking the photo, and his aunt Peggy. It is Tony's smile.

Peggy has her arms wrapped around Tony, and the boy has the air of someone who half-heartedly tries to escape an embrace, then fails without really failing at all. Both are grinning, and one can see in the background, to the left of Peggy, a few people staring at the pair―or more specifically, Tony. Neither seems to acknowledge this fact, preferring instead to relish in each other's presence.

Neither Howard nor Maria showed up that day. Tony was not surprised, nor was he disappointed―he had Peggy

In one section, there is a mass of photos covering a particular spot. Some are overlapping, none are framed. If one is to push aside the photos in the center, one will uncover a small, worn photo. It is held in place by a single piece of tape, and looks wholly unremarkable―until one registers the subjects of the photo.

The photo depicts two beaming men with arms slung across each other's shoulders, two men who look to be the best of friends. Two men who would do anything for each other. But that was a long time ago and the two are no longer friends because times change and people change. One will wonder why the photo is covered up, when in reality the real reason is quite simple.

It is because that one small, battered photo represents family and trust and betrayal and lies and hate and truth all in one, and that is too much for the Merchant of Death to bear.

The photo is dated to 2012, after the Battle of New York, and in the top right corner of the photo are five words written in Captain America's hand. Five simple words. _Howard would have been proud. _

Would he?

There is another photo, one of the framed ones. It is roughly the size of two palms laid side by side, and depicts Mr. Stark and a young brunette boy holding a plaque upside down. Neither is looking at the camera, and Mr. Stark has a small half-smile while the other boy is beaming―and that is the thing, because while the photos are framed or loose or professional or candid or black and white or colored or sepia-toned or small or large, they all have one thing in common. In each one of them, someone is smiling.

These are happy photos, family photos. These are not newspaper clippings, (_except for the one of that same boy holding a huge check while the headline reads, Queens boy wins Intel Science Fair_) or leaked press photos. These are photos that one might take of family, that one might hang up on a mantel, or a desk, or a wall, because Tony Stark does have a heart, and that heart is in every single one of those hundreds of photos.

Perhaps one of the most surprising ones is smack dab in the middle, enlarged slightly bigger than the rest so that it is prominent and will not be overlooked. It is a picture of a chest, Tony's chest, open with the arc reactor on full display. Tony is grinning, souped up with meds so he doesn't really register the photo being taken. It is surprising not because of its obvious gruesomeness, but because it would make one wonder, _why_? Why would a man as indestructible and powerful as Tony Stark want the one thing that hinders him, his Achilles heel, where anyone could see it?

Because Tony accepts it. Tony accepts, just like Achilles, that he has a heel, that there is _something_ making him human and real. Even though his heel is his heart and he wears his heart on his armored sleeve, he still chooses to get up _every day_ and fight for what he _knows_ to be true, because like Achilles, he accepts his weakness and makes a strength out of it. This in itself is more than many people could say, more than the people who build themselves up and hide behind expensive suits and oak-wood conference tables and perfectly trimmed mustaches can say, more than so-called heroes who decide that their weakness is the government and that the world is wrong can say.

Tony decides to fight his Trojans and accept that even though he may not come home from the battlefield alive, his fate will mean something, and that is what this picture represents. This picture represents Tony's acceptance of his heel, and that is truly the greatest thing a person can do.

At the end of the day, Tony Stark is human, and it is his acceptance of this truth that is his greatest achievement. While it may seem corny and a bit underwhelming, it is the truth. And in today's world, the truth is all one can hope for.

**Review please! Constructive criticism is accepted, but flames are just rude, heartless, and pointless. I'm planning for the next person to view the photos to be Pepper, but if you want, you can request a person to discover them in later chapters, like Steve or somebody. The only ships in this are Pepper/Tony.**


	2. we made these memories for ourselves

**Title: ****we keep this love in a photograph**

**Hi! Me again! This is a first for me… I don't normally update this soon between chapters. Well, I don't normally update at all… but I guess this one is different! If you have any questions just leave a review or PM me. Um, I kinda got off track and don't really know where I went with this, so if it reads in your head and sounds like a poem or has a rhythm to it, that was unintentional. I feel like each chapter might explore a different aspect of Tony Stark through other people's eyes, so if you wanna give me some prompts then I will happily accept them probably. Again, the only ship is Pepper/Tony. Please leave a review!**

_I don't hate it, what you do._

_I don't like it, because I know._

_I know that you can do so much more._

_I know you could destroy it, them, all of it._

_I know that you could with the press of a button _

_Because I know that they don't _

_And so I would press it for you._

The door opens with a whoosh, scattering bits and pieces of unfinished material here and there. The dust coating the floors, the tables, and every exposed surface picks up for a moment, then settles back down slowly. A heeled shoe steps into the room, then another, leaving indents in the dust so reminiscent of that which billions of people had dissolved into just weeks earlier. The dust which Tony had, most likely, become as well.

Pepper Potts, a picture of elegance even in the harshest of times, shakes the thought out of her mind. Tony couldn't be dead. She knew it. It was hard enough as it was, dealing with issues both in and out of her native country, what with the president and most of his cabinet members having disappeared. Pepper couldn't let herself grieve, not yet, not until the world was stable again.

And yet, sadly, it might not have ever been stable, not if they had allowed such a huge, dangerous, looming threat to hover over their unassuming world for years, _decades_, even. They would have been married, Pepper realizes, stumbling slightly as her foot catches a dent in the floor made uneven by a stray repulsor blast and catching herself on one of the many tables scattered around the room.

Her movements strew some unfinished projects across the surface onto the floor, and her awkward hunched position causes her eye to catch on a small, insignificant corner of Tony's abandoned lab, secluded and yet meticulously well kept―excluding, of course, the layer of dust coating everything in the room.

Righting herself, Pepper walks over to the corner, curious. She stops for a moment in wonder, then steps up to get a closer look. Running her hand over the photographs, accumulating weeks of dust on her nail-bitten fingertips, Pepper uncovers years of photographs spread over that space. Her eyes skim from a newspaper clipping of her and Tony smiling at the camera, arms around each other and looking carefree and happy to one of him and Rhodey in caps and gowns and diplomas in hand.

Her eyes stop, however, at a candid shot of the team after a battle, pulled from Jarvis's archives at a magical angle that only the AI could achieve.

Instead of being in the corner to overlook the scene, it's seemingly taken in midair―the angle such to allow the sunlight illuminate the tips of Tony's dark hair and glare off the surface of Steve's shield. Clint is holding his bow up to his face, perhaps inspecting it for any damage it may have sustained during the battle, and Natashalie is lounging on the couch with her arm falling off the edge, her disdainful expression Pepper had come to despise so much absent. The shot had captured Bruce mid transformation, green streaks lining his normally pale skin while his clothes were in the process of slipping off.

Steve was blushing at something Tony had said, judging by his red cheeks and Tony's devious grin. Thor was out of the shot, only visible by a blurred hand holding a light rainbow smudge that, knowing Thor, was a Pop-Tart.

And while to anybody, this could seem like a perfectly lighthearted and sweet moment, it is heartbreaking for Pepper.

It is heartbreaking because she remembers that day, she remembers how Tony had called her up afterwards (she had been in Hong Kong on business) and gushed about how Thor had accidentally burned the toaster and Clint had cooked (who knew?) some Middle Eastern dish he had learned on a mission that was, surprisingly, delicious, and how Bruce was the best Science Bro he could have asked for and how he _actually thought_ that this could work out.

It was ironic, she thinks, how quickly walls could be built and broken, how it took only one fault in the system to bring down entire empires.

For Napoleon, it was ambition, and the one thing that had brought him so far became his downfall. For Hitler, it was underestimating the power of oppression and the need for justice. For Loki, it was narrow-mindedness. And for the Avengers, it was a lack of sight. Tony saw, yes, but Tony was not an Avenger he was a consultant (Iron Man: Yes, Tony Stark: Not recommended) and yet he had done more than the other Avengers combined.

It was why she hated what he did, because she knew that he could do so much more. She knew the Avengers were holding him back, that they were wasting his money and yet she helped him help them because he was _happy_.

Pepper would destroy the world for Tony, destroy the one thing that never loved him just to see him happy. But that wouldn't make him happy, because what made him happy was making others happy and that was why he put so much into the Avengers even though they never did nearly as much back.

Pepper was seen as the strong one, the whole one, the fixed one, next to Tony. Tony was the interesting, scandalous, "useless" half while she was the mundane, unimportant, and use_ful_ one. The media saw them as day and night, yin and yang, complete opposites. The media was wrong.

They were both broken and they were both shattered, but Pepper was more adept at hiding it.

Tony coped through alcohol, Pepper coped through work.

She immersed herself in her job, signing contract after contract and supervising project after project in order to cope with the pain of not knowing―not knowing if Tony would eat that day, or even come out of his workshop, not knowing if he would come home from that mission alive, not knowing if he would eventually run himself to the ground one day and never get back up.

They were both broken, perhaps Pepper more so.

If a piece of glass cracks straight down its center then it is weak. It can be mended, but it is now weaker. And if you press down hard enough, well, it will crack once again. And so it goes, piling and piling until you run out of tape or you run out of glue and the glass finally cracks and the workload falls through.

Tony was different. Tony was metal, shiny but strong. He had melted enough, Pepper knew. She could remember one day in the house in Malibu (when there was still a house in Malibu) when the sun shone brighter than the reactor and they were out in the warmth and Tony tapped his heart with a grimace.

_The sun heats the metal, I gotta go inside. Sorry Pep, imma grab an ice pack then head down to the lab._ It must hurt, she had thought, to have your heart burn. Not in the way we feel it, with our acid and biology, but intrusive and fiery and _wrong_ and so full of pain.

Pepper was glass not because she was a bad liar, but because the most translucent and pure things can have a deathly sharp edge.

Tony was metal not because he was unbreakable, but because he was dented and scratched and not whole, but was reused and reinvented into something new.

Coming back to reality, Pepper shakes her head fondly at the next picture. It was one from what was supposed to be a professional photo shoot, in which she's smiling reservedly and would seem completely normal, if not for the blurry figure of one Tony Stark jumping in the background behind her.

He's starfished, hands in the air and legs extended as he photobombs the picture. There's a second one next to it, "part two" to the photo, and depicts her head turned over her shoulder with an exasperated smile on her face as her boss smiles widely, gelled hair now mussed up and pristine clothes ruffled.

Pepper had scolded him, and was halfway through another one of her lengthy rants when Tony had leaned over and stolen a kiss mid sentence before bounding out the doors.

The room had laughed at his antics, and the next photos were of her blushing red with a large smile on her face, a stark contrast to the demure one she had displayed before.

Much to her chagrin, after vehement protests _not_ to use those photos they still ended up on her LinkedIn profile as well as her official page on the Stark Industries website. Coincidentally, the photographer's pockets were significantly heavier than before after a tiny visit from one Tony Stark not three hours after the shoot ended.

Those were happy times, Pepper thinks. Perhaps there was the underlying threat of Thanos that only Tony knew of, perhaps there were those people who would never be satisfied with what they were given and would seek _more_, more to hurt, more that they did not deserve to achieve, and perhaps the world would never truly understand Tony, but to Pepper, Tony is the strongest and most wonderful person she knows.

Even though she doesn't know when he'll be back, or if he'll be back, Pepper will never give up hope because Tony never did, and his hope was her light in the darkness and the arc reactor was his, and they shone together as one.

**Review please! I accept constructive criticism, but before you flame please ask yourself, do I really need to offload this onto a person I don't know, who probably has enough stress in their life **_**without**_ **the rude comments? **

**The next person will be Peter, and it will have Endgame spoilers. These aren't going to be dialogue heavy, so I hope that's not an issue. Shoutout to susieutting for the prompt and TinyFox2 for the hella relatable statement.**

**Also is anyone going to Pride? I want to, but it's on Father's Day so I don't know if I will. **

**Don't forget to review, favorite, and follow! Love you guys!**


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